Introduction
Thoughtful Americans from all sections of the community are trying to come to terms with the new concepts of sexual morality that have burst upon the national scene. Television, films, magazines and the family living room are ringing with passionate discussion and argument over the challenging new code of behavior in the field of sexual behavior.
Two salient articles of faith in the new ethics are the demand for freedom of sexual activity and the insistence on honesty in the encounters between sexual partners. How do these two current requirements actually apply in everyday contemporary life? Do they work together or are they largely incompatible in action?
Milton Granby, whose searching, probing work we are proud to offer the reading public, brings a deep understanding of the ambiguities of the new ethics to an explosive situation in the life of a newly-married couple. His direct unflinching probe helps to illuminate the insidious moral corruption that here accompanies a radical shift in the sexual standards of the young people of today.
Harry and Sandy Pitt, a typically self-respecting, well brought-up young couple find that, for all the pretense and falseness they gradually strip away from their lives, they never succeed in ending the torturous thread of dishonesty to one another.
Finally, in exercising their newfound freedom, they are revealed to be even more deeply entangled in lies and deception than in their repressed conventional beginnings.
Mr. Granby leaves us with the disturbing conclusion that for all their experimentation, her characters have gained only in their knowledge of evil. Is that all we can gain from too much freedom and honesty?
The Publishers